Often when you describe a movie to somebody as a family film they are immediately repulsed, assuming the movie in question is going to be a film for children with a few pop culture or adult references thrown in. They assume this with a weary cynicism, since that sort of tired Hollywood formula is what comprises 90 per cent of what passes for family entertainment. Proper family films, which appeal with equal quality to all ages of filmgoer, are strikingly rare. The very best ones are absolute treasures. Bookworm is in cinemas in Australia now, and it should indeed be treasured. This is great, emotive, and deeply funny stuff.

The bookworm in question is 11 year-old New Zealand Mildred (Nell Fisher). She wants to track down the fabled Canterbury panther – a sort of local urban myth – in the deep wilderness. When her mother suffers an accident and gets placed into an induced coma, Mildred falls into the care of her estranged birth father Strawn (Elijah Wood): a failed stage magician from America. To curry favour with his resentful daughter Strawn agrees to join her in a hunt for the panther, setting off a genuinely delightful road movie.

As most of the film plays as a two-hander, finding strong characters is critical. On the page Mildred threatens to be a stereotype: a wise-beyond-her-years child intellectual. Her caustic level of sarcasm, however, paired with Nell Fisher’s superb performance, makes the characters an immensely enjoyable one. She is well contrasted by Wood’s seedy and slightly pathetic turn as Strawn. It enables balance between the characters, and huge amounts of comedic interplay.

Nell Fisher seems likely to have a long, successful career ahead of her, should she choose to have one. She is exceptional here, and she was exceptional in last year’s Evil Dead Rise. That she will next be seen in the final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things pretty much guarantees her a growing profile with audiences. We are lucky to have her.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the film is its sincerity. While director Ant Timpson packs it with huge amounts of absurdism, scathing wit, and frivolity, everything eventually boils down to an honest, optimistic, and heartfelt portrayal of a father and a daughter. It works as a magic ingredient: it lifts every other aspect of the production, and pushes a good all-ages adventure into a great one. It is a superb achievement for Timpson, and presents a sharp contrast to his earlier film Come to Daddy (2019), which also starred Wood. At the same time, it is hard not to notice that both films have, at their foundation, a broken parent-child relationship in need of mending. The results are wildly different but the thematic concerns remain the same.